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Matthew Staver/Bloomberg News

As President Obama said himself, that was the message in Friday’s Labor Department report, which showed that the United States economy added 151,000 jobs in October.

The gain was certainly a welcome change after four months of job losses, and was better than what economists had expected. Still, it was not nearly strong enough to make a dent in unemployment. Nearly 15 million people are still out of work, and the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at 9.6 percent.

The jobless rate has not fallen substantially this year, largely because employers have barely added enough workers to absorb the people just entering the labor force. And even if the economy suddenly expands and starts adding 208,000 jobs a month — as it did in its best year this decade — it would still take 12 years to close the gap between the growing number of American workers and the total available jobs, according to the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project.

The latest numbers underscore the challenges that lie ahead for Washington with a newly divided government and calls by Republican leadership to discredit Mr. Obama’s economic policies. Economists themselves cannot agree about what kinds of policy measures would rescue the job market. Even if a magic-bullet jobs program existed, however, it seems unlikely that a gridlocked Congress could cooperate long enough to put it in place.

Moreover, the policy measures that remain — in particular, the Federal Reserve’s decision this week to pump more money into the economy — seem to be upsetting the rest of world. One effect of the Fed’s actions is to drive the dollar lower against other currencies, making American products more competitive and perhaps laying the groundwork for asset bubbles elsewhere. The lead-up to the Group of 20 summit meeting in Seoul, South Korea, next week has been dominated by criticisms of the Fed’s announcement and battle cries over “currency wars,” prompting the Fed chairman to defend the action on Friday.

“The primary purpose is to take a bunch of U.S. companies and open up markets so that we can sell in Asia, in some of the fastest-growing markets in the world, and we can create jobs here in the United States of America,” Mr. Obama told his cabinet Thursday.

On Friday he tried to highlight bright spots in the jobs report, calling it “encouraging.” Still he acknowledged, “The fact is, an encouraging jobs report doesn’t make a difference if you’re still one of the millions of people who are looking for work.”

He reached out to Republicans who have just won control of the House and picked up six seats in the Senate, pledging to work together on job growth. “I am open to any idea, any proposal, any way we can get the economy growing faster so that people who need work can find it faster,” he said, ticking off initiatives like more infrastructure spending and tax breaks for businesses.

While Washington is deciding how to respond to problems in the job market, businesses say uncertainty about measures like the expiring Bush tax cuts can discourage hiring.

“When we don’t have a clue what two of our largest budget items are, taxes and health care, we’ve got to keep all the money we possibly have,” said Patricia Felder, an owner of Felder’s Collision Parts, a small company in Baton Rouge, La., that sells automotive parts.

“We may need it for taxes since we have no idea what we’re looking at next year,” Ms. Felder said. “And we may need it to provide the same level of health care for employees that they got used to having.”

In the absence of Congressional action, the extensions in unemployment benefits are also scheduled to expire soon, cutting off two million Americans in December alone, according to the National Employment Law Project. With little prospect of finding a job in the near future, many of the nation’s long-term unemployed have become increasingly desperate.

“I hope that Congress can become human and forget about being Democrats or Republicans and just be human beings to see what it’s like for us,” said Annette Tornberg, 50, of Sacramento. She was laid off from her job at a printing company in 2009 and has been unable to find work despite sending out more than a thousand résumés, she said. “We’re human beings, and all we want is for you to help us out.”

Of course, the ideal salve for the nation’s unemployed would be gainful employment, not jobless benefits. And there are some glimmers of hope.

Private companies have been expanding their payrolls throughout the year. For several months, however, job growth in the private sector had been overshadowed by cuts in temporary Census jobs and layoffs by state and local governments. Then in October, governments cut just 8,000 jobs, after eliminating 148,000 positions in September. And private companies added 159,000 jobs last month, after a gain of 107,000 in September.

On many levels, the October report was much better than expected.

Economists had forecast a net gain of 60,000 jobs, less than half the increase posted on Friday. The government also revised upward the numbers for August and September, showing 110,000 fewer jobs lost. In total, the American economy has added 860,000 positions this calendar year, indicating the picture is not quite as bleak as it appeared before the midterm elections.

There were a few other positive notes. Hourly wages were slightly higher last month. A broader measure of unemployment, which includes people who are working part time because they cannot find full-time jobs and people who have given up seeking work, eased to 17 percent from 17.1 percent in September.

John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics, said the data pointed to a pickup in growth in the fourth quarter. “The notion that the economy might be double dipping can now be safely tossed out,” he said.

Among the industries with the biggest gains last month were education and health services, which added 53,000 jobs; retail, which added 28,000; and temporary help services, which expanded by 34,900 jobs. Another positive sign was a lengthening private-sector workweek, which rose by one-tenth of an hour, to 34.3 hours. Like the hiring of temporary workers, an expanding workweek is a potential harbinger of more permanent hiring.

Longer hours and slightly higher hourly wages may help propel consumer spending, which could in turn lead retailers to hire more workers.

“For the fourth quarter, things may not be quite blockbuster, but it does look like we’re picking up a little momentum as we’re going into the holiday season,” said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight. “That’s certainly good news.”

Christine Hauser and Peter Baker contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 6, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.